Saturday, October 25, 2008

I just finished reading a book that I really enjoyed by Philip Yancey. Anyway, he said something that kind of got me near the end, although I don't think he meant for it to be as impacting as it was to me.

He talked about how sometimes we view the tapestry of God through a magnifying glass. Think of it like a person who is appraising a piece of art. They take out a magnifying glass and see the tiniest of cracks, the little specks of colors under that glass. The problem is, they can't see the full picture and lose the ability to admire it's beauty.

I wonder how many times we have done this with God, that we spend so much time arguing or mulling over some tiny, almost insignificant piece of theology so much so that we lose the ability to see the true beauty of who God is. We lose the sense of God's love for us.

Friday, October 24, 2008

The other night I was up late watching TV and this ad for the Honda CR-V came on. Usually, I don't care, but the pitch they gave this car was so ridiculous I wrote it down (and tried not to wake Lorie laughing). I tried to find it online, but couldn't, but trust me, this is what they said to show how awesome their vehicle is.

"Convenient, easy access door opening."

Really?! You can open the door? Easily? Yeah, those other cars, I was having such a hard time working the handle, the whole pulling thing. I'm glad they finally perfected that.

I guess what made it worse is after saying that they showed a woman opening the door and putting art in the back seat. It's so easy they had to show me how the door opens.

I am so fascinated I may need to trade in my Geo. Forget that it's small and old, I want doors that are easier to open darn it.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Today I had the fun job of going to hotels and finding out their room rates in case people come visit our church. I repeat. Fun job.

Well, there is a hotel across the highway from the church. You can see the church from it's front door. It makes sense that we would go there first.

So I end up talking to the woman at the desk and telling her about what I'm looking for. She's very helpful, giving me prices, etc. Then I ask how many people can stay in a room. She's a little confused by the question so I explain that teenagers may be involved. She immediately gives me back my card, explains how the hotel has a "no teenager" policy (I don't know how that works) but it's because they are too messy and loud. I tell her it's for a church, it doesn't matter.

But that got me thinking, obviously the person who owns that hotel had something happen that forever left a bad impression on them of how a teenager will act in a hotel. And faith made no impact on how they viewed teenagers.

So my question to you is, what kind of impression do you leave with people...?

Friday, October 17, 2008

First the question, why do we have to work so hard to get people to do their best? Or even better, why do we have to convince people to do their best? If you take a job or volunteer to do something, or join a sport, why on earth would you even consider doing it if you have no intention of giving your best? Or another one, do people honestly think this is the best they can do when it's obvious it's not? Sorry that was more than one question, it's just been bugging me today...

For the funny though, Lorie and I went to the zoo (of course) where we spent a lot of time looking at otters and things of that sort. We also had to go see Martin, the new baby cow. He was in his pen and friendly and really soft. So I pet Martin, and he liked it (as animals do). So Lorie goes to pet Martin, and he turns into her arm like most animals do when they like being pet. But as he turns in, he flicks his head and gives her this huge lick down her arm. It was really funny. It would have been funnier if she wasn't wearing my sweater...

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Today I was at lunch at Fishers High School, my first full lunch all year, and I ended up talking with a student who knew I was a youth pastor (it's not hard to figure out) and immediately told her story of the one time in her life she had been to church and why she wouldn't go back.

I won't bother getting to the details, but can everyone do me one of two favors. One, if you've never been to church or been to one bad church, realize they're not all the same. That's like saying "I went to a party and it was bad so I'm never going to any type of party again." There are different churches with different styles of music, different people, different approaches to worshipping God. And for those who ware in churches, can you please be nice to people? Be friendly? Say "hi"? It's amazing how many people I talk to who go to a church and cannot remember anyone saying "hi". That doesn't mean that absolutely nobody said hello, but greetings were few and far enough between that it didn't stick into their memory.

On the flip side, I had one student today realize how easy it is to invite someone to church. Someone asked what I did, I told them, said they're welcome anytime and what do you know, they're thinking about it. And I'm a stranger. Imagine if a friend of theirs invited them...

Monday, October 13, 2008

For some reason all day yesterday I was thinking about time and how we've made our lives so incredibly constrained by it. Let me explain.

Go all the way back to creation. God creates and there are only two units of time, evening and morning. Our day was divided into one of two, you were either in daylight, or you were in night. That's it.

Then, sometime, the standard for the day was split into 5. There was dawn (6:00), the mid-morning, or the 3rd hour (9:00), noon (12:00), mid-afternoon, or the 9th hour (3:00) and dusk (6:00). If you were to meet someone, you would use one of those first 4 times (you didn't usually meet after dark). Our day was now divided a little more...

Then at some point we divided our day into 24 hours. Some trace this back to the Babylonians using a 12 hour clock but I don't know how reliable that is. There is also evidence of Egyptians having a 12 hour clock in 1300 B.C. (10 hours day, 2 hours twilight, 12 hours night), but it wasn't in common practice like the 5 division Roman day. The Romans still recognized those hours (as evident by the 3rd hour, 6th hour, etc.) but were still 5 divisions in practice. Either way, for centuries this was used, mostly by astronomers and people related to the stars (navigators and scientists too). Why 24? Who knows. A common theory is because 24 is an easily divisible number (2,3,4,6,8,12).

But that wasn't enough.w had to break it down more. Back to those whacky Babylonians and their astronomers, at sometime between 300-100 B.C. they divided by 60 (again, easy to divide by) and created minutes and seconds. Now our lives are measured even more minutely.

But that's still not enough. If you watched the Olympics, you would have noticed that they needed to make time smaller, 100th's of a second. And for me, all the music stuff I do, well, that's even more minute. I go to 1000ths of a second.

We have made time so small, and in doing so, made it so big in importance. It just seems crazy to me that we would do that, we would micro mange ourselves into the 1000th's of a second.

And yet, through all this, it's still not right. A standard day, full revolution of the earth, well, that's only 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds...